Veco sentencing on hold

The Associated Press

Published: May 1st, 2008 01:49 AM

Federal prosecutors aren’t ready just yet to recommend sentences for their two witnesses in an ongoing federal corruption probe.

In a status report filed in federal court Wednesday, prosecutors requested that sentencing for former Veco executives Bill Allen and Rick Smith continue to be postponed as the investigation continues.

Prosecutors wrote the investigation is “exceedingly complex,” and they promised to have another update no later than July 31.

Both Allen and Smith pleaded guilty last year to federal bribery charges.

They’ve been key witnesses in the convictions of two former state lawmakers so far, and former Rep. Bruce Weyhrauch is awaiting trial while questions about evidence in his case are being appealed.

ENJOY THE OPPOSITION AS THIS IS WHERE YOU DESERVE. // May 5, 2008 at 12:40 am

Get used to the opposition, you have been put there by your own actions, remember the Prison , the 3S road works, the transfer of the Holders land, TIME IS LONGER THAN TWINE people, ARROGANCE AND COORUPTION WAS YOUR FAILURE LIKE IT OR LUMP IT.

You and your party were under the feeling that you were untouchable and you acted in that manner, but your day of decision came before you were able to fully raid us any further.

Thank god for the sensible thinking Barbadians that came out and voted you out of office.

Let us remember those statements made by mottley to some of the biggest names in the building business here that they would tow the line with regard to the illegal Chinese workers and if they did not TOW THE LINE THEY COULD EXPECT A VAT AND TAX AUDIT, this is just not how business is done in this island and it is a disgusting act by a Deputy P M to threaten our business leaders in such a manner for her own selfish reasons.

Is this the method of a Deputy P M or a DICTATOR in action?????

A political pimp if there was ever one, that is HENDERSON STANDS FOR NOTHING BOVELL.

Actually he was only one of the 28 or 29 that have been revealed todate most of which hail from arthur’s office, Ezra Alleyne, Clyde Griffith, Phillip Goddard, Denil Agard and the list is on going, each one earing no less than $ 100,000.00 of our money.

Is he the subject in the following taken from the last weeks’ “Flying Fish & Cou Cou”?

“Pieces of silver

WORD IS THAT a certain individual who has changed his charge from saint into a modern-day male Jezebel, went on a mission early in the year and it backfired in his face.

Seems that his about-turn and departure from the hive, is, and was something, that he was trying to impress on his former foes at every juncture.

Cou Cou understands that he went with $5 000 to a certain individual and offered it as a gift to assist in a particular venture.

But after assessing the situation and acknowledging that he was dealing with an individual with no fibre, the individual told him: “Thanks, but no thanks, you keep your pieces of silver.”

Anchorage food prices soar with fuel costs
10 PERCENT IN 3 MONTHS: Drought and farm subsidies squeeze consumers.

By GEORGE BRYSON
gbryson@adn.com

Published: April 29th, 2008 12:03 AM
Last Modified: April 29th, 2008 04:40 AM

You can see it in the bread aisle at Carrs, where shoppers nowadays stare long and hard at a small $4.50 loaf of all-grain Oroweat Best Winterwheat bread before placing it in the cart.

Click to enlarge

TUNA up 34% 2007 $1.76 2008 $2.36

Click to enlarge

RICE up 85% 2007 $0.46 2008 $0.85

Click to enlarge

WHITE FLOUR up 21% 2007 $.34 2008 $.41

Click to enlarge

EGGS up 23% 2007 $1.80 2008 $2.22

Click to enlarge

COFFEE up 14% 2007 $2.40 2008 $2.74

Click to enlarge

CHEDDAR CHEESE up 61% 2007 $2.75 2008 $4.42

Click to enlarge

WHOLE GRAIN BREAD up 22% 2007 $1.48 2008 $1.81

Click to enlarge

WHITE BREAD up 33% 2007 $.92 2008 $1.22

Click to enlarge

GROUND BEEF up 18% 2007 $2.41 2008 $2.85

Click to enlarge

APPLES up 24% 2007 $.98 2008 $1.22

Story tools

Comments

E-mail a friend

Print

Digg this

Seed Newsvine

Send link via AIM

Font size : A | A | A
Or at the Costco on DeBarr Road, where fears over rice availability and price increases to come created a small stampede near the entrance Monday morning as customers raced for the food aisles — clearing out four whole pallets of rice in less than 15 minutes.

Or in the wall-to-wall faces of morning diners at Bean’s Cafe, which increasingly caters to Anchorage’s “working poor” — low-income residents who tell the staff they can’t afford to buy their own food the last half of the month.

Food prices in Anchorage are rising.

After remaining stable for several years, the cost of a typical weekly shopping cart of food for an Anchorage family of four shot up 10 percent during the first three months of this year — from $121.31 to $132.88, according to preliminary statistics reported Monday by the University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Service.

Some individual items have climbed even higher. From March 2007 to March 2008, ground beef rose 18 percent. Eggs, 22 percent. White bread, 33 percent. Cheddar cheese, 61 percent. Rice, 85 percent.

Experts blame a variety of factors, from global-warming-related droughts to higher shipping costs (driven by steadily rising fuel prices) to allocation decisions traceable to farmers who choose to grow government-subsidized biofuel crops rather than food crops.

But it all comes down to a bigger hit on the pocketbook, according to Anchorage resident Janet Galbraith, who says she’s changed the way she eats because of the increase in prices.

“Everything has gone up,” Galbraith said Monday afternoon, standing with her cart at the Midtown Fred Meyer. She’s buying more generic groceries now and tailors her cooking to what’s on sale.

“I’m just more careful than I was before,” she said.

RUSH ON RICE

The most dramatic example of costlier food, both locally and worldwide, might be the suddenly soaring price of rice, partly due to droughts and shortages in producing countries in Southeast Asia.

On the global commodities market, the price of rice has jumped 68 percent this year. And rice eaters in the U.S. — including a significant population of Asian-Americans living in Alaska — are stockpiling rice after hearing horror stories about shortages and soaring prices from relatives back home.

That trend accelerated last week when news spread that Sam’s Club and Costco, which typically sell some of the lowest-priced groceries in town, had set new restrictions on how much rice its members can purchase.

Costco members can now buy no more than five bags of rice per day, which still allows someone to purchase as much as 250 pounds per trip — if it’s available.

By 10:15 a.m. Monday, all the rice at the DeBarr Costco, which had been restocked overnight from the Sunday shipment, was gone.

Manager Bob Ripley said some of the rice-buying spree should be a short-lived story, at least at Costco, since supplies from U.S. growers appear to be ample. He expects more rice to arrive with each new ship. The restrictions, he said, were aimed mostly at the owners of local restaurants that serve a lot of rice cuisine.

“I have some pretty big accounts that buy a lot of rice from us, and it wouldn’t be fair for us to sell everything we own to them — and then have that price not be a good value to all our members,” Ripley said.

WHEAT AND FLOUR

But rising prices don’t stop with rice.

“You talk to any retailer or wholesaler in town and they’re going to tell you the same thing,” Ripley said. “Prices are going up across the board — with gas and everything else.”

Wheat commodities are also on the rise worldwide.

Great Harvest Bread Co. owner Dirk Sisson, who buys flour by the ton, says his Benson Boulevard business has seen the price of white flour he purchases from a seller in Montana double in the past three months — from $18 for a 50-pound bag in January to $36 today.

“The franchise has never seen anything like this,” Sisson said. “The problem is just basic economics of supply and demand. … There’s a shortage of wheat right now.”

As a result, he’s raised the price of his breads about a quarter a loaf, Sisson said.

Part of that covers the higher shipping costs for the 6,000 pounds of flour he buys each week, he said.

“Whereas a year ago I was paying about 10 cents a pound for freight, now I’m paying 15 cents.”

BUSH GROCERIES

The steep increase in shipping costs is, of course, expected to hit rural residents the hardest. It’s already being felt in Bethel, according to grocery story owner Christy Inman.

“Every time I look at my billing, it seems like things keep going higher and higher,” Inman said Monday. “This is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s going to get way worse by the end of the summer.”

She said she doesn’t know how people from surrounding villages are going to be able to pay for the boat fuel to come to Bethel for groceries.

“But, fortunately, they can subsistence fish and hunt. They can go out and get birds and eggs, pick berries,” Inman said. “They are at least going to be better off than the people in the cities who can only go to the store.”

Cathy Squartsoff in Port Lions, on Kodiak Island, said she and her husband are taking the ferry up to Anchorage to load up on groceries for their lodge. The cost of putting three vehicles on a ferry and shopping at Sam’s Club and Costco is cheaper than buying groceries in Kodiak, she said. “It is just more expensive,” she said of the island prices.

Nome resident Sterling Buffas said the cost of milk has gone up from about $6 a gallon to $7 recently. “We’ve got two babies, a 2-year-old and a 3-year-old — we still have to buy it,” he said.

THE HUNGRY POOR

At Bean’s Cafe near downtown Anchorage, executive director James Crockett has seen food costs for his nonprofit agency rise steadily since the start of the year.

“We’ve seen a 15 percent increase in roast beef, a 19 percent increase in tuna, a 23 percent increase in apples,” Crockett said.

At the same time, he’s watched low-income residents in the community — people he calls the working poor — increasingly take advantage of free meals at Bean’s, especially during the second half of the month.

“These are people who basically pay their rent and put money in the gas tank, then they look in the refrigerator and it’s empty,” Crockett said. “They used to come (to Bean’s) around the 21st of the month. Now we’re seeing them toward the 10th and 12th.”

——————————————————————————–

Find George Bryson online at adn.com/contact/gbryson or call 257-4318. Reporter Megan Holland contributed to this article.

——————————————————————————–

Trip to the store

Weekly shopping cart for a family of four in Anchorage:

2005 (Dec) $118.33

2006 (Dec) $119.32

2007 (Dec) $121.31

2008 (Mar) $132.88

UAF Cooperative Extension Service

every word i say is true–
as for my predictions : these are done based on previous experience,
already i have been told that all is not well in the d l p camp.

everyone is not in agreement with the maximum leader for the price increases he introduced and cracks are beginning to widen , cracks were present before.

i am not political, i called it as i see it
and the way i see it, this economy has always been a challenge and if you dont have the ability to run this boom and bust economy you will run the country into trouble. thompson and his band are not CAPABLE of running the economy. this is not a joke

just check the comments or listen to maxine

yeah ! and when bajans take stock and the named business start complaining —do you know what will happen ?

WORKERS will be dis-employed, laid off, fired—– results: UN-EMPLOYMENT—-it is like the past 14 years did not happen and we are right back to 1991-94 when OWEN SEYMOUR -had to rescue our tails from disaster.

as a matter of fact quite unfortunately for the DLP they have taken over at this time and more unfortunately is the fact that the present prime minister and his government cannot manage this economy. this economy is a boom and bust economy and you have to be skilled in the mode of errol barrow, tom adams and owen seymour to effectively run this economy. david thompson cannot get um run and that is why they advised the hardears people in barbados –not to vote d l p at the time . there was absolutely no need for change and never mind what d l p apologists such as some of the commenters have to say , no amount of excuses will help david.

it is goin to get worse, people will start resigning from cabinet and from statutory boards etc. colin spencer is the first but not the last. i suspect that the ministers who are not real real politicians will be the first to quit cabinet. maxine might be the first, followed by walters, boyce, kellman, lashley, -and the beat goes on -until 3 years down the road -bang ! um dun –d l p government in trouble

this is not fantasy-it happen already.
in 1986 the d l p fooled the people wid promises–
by 1988 haynes and sadiford were at war: sandy appointed winston cox and dr king as director of finance and planning and govenor of the central bank without telling richie haynes who was minister of finance–and the rest is history

david thompson will make sandy look like sir winston churchill

ah tell yuh !

…..I got news for them. In 1991 Barbadians where not made aware that they were facing the same issues as other citizens around the world. 2008 is different, the awareness of Barbadians their ability to recall these current events in 2012, will be my focus. The task of all Barbadians in the diaspora is to relay our own exeperiences with our families at home, so that they can become aware that they are not alone. In addition current worldwide news articles, podcast etc, that are currently dealing with todays world economies, will be readily available to combat the political trick and lie machine of the BLP. It will not be convenient to remake 1991 into 2008 for election marketing come 2012.

Having just read through the comments of persons under the top blog, and we would have read also your response to us, we are somewhat clear in our minds that there was NOTHING OUTSTANDING ABOUT THIS PARTICULAR CALL IN PROGRAM AND THAT IT WAS THE SAME OLE DRY TALK THAT WAS BEING REPRESENTED BY THOSE PARTICIPATING ACTORS. So, really those members of our party who went to Farley Hill missed NOTHING!! The show was fairly okay, but did NOT live up to its usual great billing in terms of the on stage performances from the artistes on the whole, although the attendance was very good, and the crowds very well behaved, among other things favourable.

But, back to the real subject at hand, the fundamental strategy of a particular and dastard effort by the DLP and BLP, and in association with the mainstream media, is to allow most of politics in Barbados to be defined by things DLP and BLP. What total and complete ignorance? So they have this call in program about the first 100 days of this already failing DLP Government, and they seemingly ONLY invited representatives of the DLP and BLP? No representatives of the other two parties? So, right away this call in program did NOT have real legitimacy from the start to the end, and from the point of view of the lack of other perspectives from the other parties about what is presently happening in Barbados and in the rest of the world, politically, economically and financially speaking, so that in the alternative these other representatives would have been in position to give a more balanced and learned and dispassionate perpective on the matters that had been or could have dealt with on the program, if they had been invited and had attented. Rather than the DLP, BLP and the mainstream media ) wanting us – the masses and middle classes of people in Barbados mainly – to be so wrongly focussing on some idiotic belief that the DLP and the BLP – which have so stupidly contributed to many of these problems themselves – really have many of the solutions to these problems, and therefore must be ones always represented on these programs. What a sick joke to play on the masses and middle classes of people of this country!!

David, the point must be made by us, too, that the first 100 days of a government are used to partially measure what kind of start a government has got off to doing, or could have got off to doing but did NOT got off to doing, but especially given the promises that the party later forming the government would have made in the preceding election period, and therefore what one could look forward to from that government for the rest of the term of government. It is NOT really about what a government would have been EXPECTED to do in those first 100 days – especially with regard to any serious and complex and grandiose policies and programs!! However, we have given the DLP a D for its first 100 days performance.

PDC

…seems like however we look at it, we are in for a rough ride.

The bible pushers have been predicting ‘the time of troubles’ of the last days for centuries now, but it seems that they had been drowned out by the scientists with their global warming, population crisis, food crisis, fuel shortages, aids, etc.
Now we have the economists admitting total loss of control and a spiraling decline into chaos.

… I wonder exactly what it will take for us to see the much BIGGER picture? Even without the benefit of the analysis provided by Sam above, It was obvious to Bush tea from 2001 that it was no longer business as usual.

Obviously different individuals will have different priorities when faced with a reality like this, but I am amazed at the prevalence of the ‘head-in-the-sand’ group. The ones that behave as though if we don’t think about it, it must go away.

In the final analysis however, Life on earth is a project that has run its course. We happen to have been born at the wrap-up stage of the project -a fact that Bush tea considers a special blessing.
While it will be the most chaotic time in the history of the project, these troubles merely represent the birth pains of the next phase of project ‘Life on Earth’.

When one understands this bigger picture, then the ‘troubles to come’ are far less scary or daunting…

What trouble what?!?

Donald Duck, Esq you quack, I have names times and places that link your former leader to these actions and I do not need to explain them to you, but a word to you would let you know that some of your most trusted friends are now singing like birds to get themselves out of trouble.
Funny how life can be is it not???

…. As opponents, the terrorists have played us painfully well. They bleed us internally with financial upheaval. They bleed us externally with the cost of oil and military expenditures….

And many (but certainly not all) Americans have mis-identified who exactly are the real terrorists. See:
http://www.barbadosforum.com/index.php?showtopic=6694

Welcome to post-9/11 New York. If this were a movie, it would definitely be in the paranoid sci-fi genre, something like “THX 1138” or “Brazil.” But it isn’t.

Nor am I visiting the United Nations, the New York Federal Reserve or virtually any firm on Wall Street. They’ve all been drum-tight for decades.

No, I am visiting a literary agent in an obscure and slightly decrepit Manhattan office building. If the federal government rated buildings by probability of terrorist attack the way Amazon ranks best-selling books, this building— trendy, literary location notwithstanding— would be hopelessly far down the list.

Having just spent five days in the disaster that is Florida real estate, it makes me wonder: Is it possible that the 9/11 terrorist attack is the root cause of declining home values? Is it possible that sub-prime loans and speculative building/buying were no more than tools, the equivalent of hijacked airliners?

If so, the eventual economic cost of that single attack may run in the trillions. It may also help us find the unity to gird our country against the biggest threat since World War II. Here’s the case.

We were in the second year of a brutal three-year stock market decline when radical Islamic terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center. Even so, borrowed money wasn’t dirt cheap. The federal funds rate, down from nearly 6 percent during the Internet boom years, was 3.65 percent in August 2001.

It fell to 1.75 percent within weeks of the attack. Policy makers struggled to keep the economy from coming to a standstill.

The federal funds rate continued to drop, hitting a low of 0.98 percent in December 2003. That was more than two years after the attack. We were well into a powerful stock market recovery. The federal funds rate stayed around 1 percent long enough to set off a boom in low-cost mortgages and in home prices.

Home buyers discovered that very ordinary paychecks could now buy extraordinary homes. People with cash to deposit learned that their money earned virtually nothing.

Interest rates on home mortgages dropped fast enough that the National Association of Realtors’ well-known housing affordability index showed that almost anyone could buy and own a house somewhere in America, even if they couldn’t do it in Santa Barbara, Palm Beach, or Manhattan. As a practical matter, borrowed money was virtually free.

Small wonder home prices soared. According to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), the national index of home values rose 46.9 percent in the five years ending September 30, 2007. That’s an annualized appreciation rate of 8 percent— enough to make us all think owning a home was way better than the stock market or actually working for a living. Buying and owning a home was literally a cheap thrill.

During the same period, the CPI rose at only 2.9 percent annualized.

We could, of course, blame the Federal Reserve for keeping interest rates too low for too long. We could also blame Wall Street. Or mortgage lenders and their brokers. And we could blame the borrowers for being foolish. We certainly can’t take any pride in the greed-driven decisions that fueled the problem.

But one big fact remains: None of this misery would have happened if 9/11 hadn’t happened first.

Is there a bottom line here?

I think there is. As opponents, the terrorists have played us painfully well. They bleed us internally with financial upheaval. They bleed us externally with the cost of oil and military expenditures. Our leaders— political and business— have underestimated both our vulnerability and the strategic smarts of our opponent.

BT, you may be right about 9/11. One of my favorite investing columnists said that that was the start of what is all unfolding now. Seems the recession started then was headed off and not allowed to run the course so here we are.
You could check him out at Sottburns.com.

Dese are some serious times!!

Whatever the motives, that in my view was the fundamental flaw of the last administration’s policies on the energy and the cost of food.

A recent BLP column suggested that a bond could have been raised to cover the debt of the oil company. The message to me was, move the debt somewhere else, let the good times roll and the problem will eventually go away.

We are facing a perfect economic storm, which requires deep and meaningful adjustments. The PM may be no economic genius, but this actions to date suggest he has some appreciation of the gravity of the situation and is willing to act.